VA Police Department Urged To Drop Felony Charges Against Senator

VIRGINIA — Felony charges by the Portsmouth Police Department against state Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D) and several other local officials with being part of a conspiracy to topple Confederate soldier statues in June are drawing accusations of political payback for efforts by Lucas to implement police reforms on a statewide basis.

Lucas, who represents Portsmouth in the Virginia Senate, faces charges of conspiracy to commit a felony and injury to a monument in excess of $1,000, Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene said Monday during a news conference.

Lawmakers and legal groups across the state are blasting the highly unusual move by the Portsmouth Police Department to file felony charges against the public officials. The charges against Lucas and other officials in the Hampton Roads area “constitute a stark overreach by police,” the American Civil Liberties of Virginia said Wednesday. The charges “are discriminatory and should be dropped.”

Lucas is a longtime Democratic legislator and a key figure in the state Senate, joining the chamber in 1992. The charges were filed the same week Virginia lawmakers are taking up dozens of criminal justice reforms during a special legislative session.

The actions by the Portsmouth Police Department also drew the ire of the state’s top political leaders. On Monday evening, Gov. Ralph Northam (D) tweeted that it is “deeply troubling that on the verge of Virginia passing long-overdue police reform, the first Black woman to serve as our Senate Pro Tempore is suddenly facing highly unusual charges.”

Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax said Tuesday in comments to the news media that the charges against Lucas and the other officials are “outrageous” and “politically motivated.”

“The fact that they would file these charges the day before she comes here to introduce legislation to reform police practices in the commonwealth of Virginia shows both the irony and the fact that we have a long way to go — 400 years of history in Virginia of oppression and racial injustice,” Fairfax said.

On Monday, Greene announced the felony warrants against Lucas and more than a dozen others, including three local public defenders and three representatives of the Portsmouth NAACP.

Others facing the same charges as Lucas include Portsmouth NAACP representatives James Boyd, Louie Gibbs and LaKesha Hicks; and LaKeesha S. “Klu” Atkinson, a city School Board member. Three public defenders — Brenda Spry, Alexandra Stephens and Meredith Cramer — face a single felony charge of injury to a monument in excess of $1,000.

The Virginian-Pilot reported that while several of those charged were present during daytime protests, it was “not clear whether any of them are accused of being present hours later, when people beheaded the statues and a man was seriously injured by a falling piece of the structure.”

As demonstrations after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis spread across the country, Confederate statues and monuments became a focal point for protests in the state, including in Portsmouth.

On June 10, as a crowd gathered at a Confederate monument in Portsmouth, Lucas appeared on video taken by police urging officers not to arrest people who she said were about to paint the monument. A police officer responded to Lucas that she cannot order the protesters them to paint the monument. According to the video, Lucas replied: “I’m not telling them to do anything. I’m telling you, you can’t arrest them.”

Lucas then asked the police to contact Portsmouth City Manager Lydia Pettis Patton about how to handle the protest.

Later that day, after Lucas and other officials charged with felonies had left the area, protesters pulled down statues at the monument. As one statue was falling, it fell on a protester’s head, seriously injuring him.

Last month, Lucas filed a $20.7 million defamation lawsuit against an attorney who organized a petition for her recall in response to the toppling of the statues on June 10. The lawsuit alleged that Timothy Anderson, an attorney based in Virginia Beach, “knew … information he stated involving Lucas was untrue at the time he stated it" and that “these words harmed Senator Lucas’ reputation, by lowering her in the community’s estimation.”

Anderson alleged Lucas told Portsmouth police to stand down and not arrest any protesters at the June 10 demonstration. "We are not anticipating that lawsuit to get very far," Anderson said in a news conference in response to Lucas' lawsuit.

According to a petition drafted by the Grassroots Law Project, the charges brought by Police Chief Greene are “clearly an act of retaliation for Sen. Lucas' work in pursuit of substantial criminal justice reform and addressing abuses by police, and a blatant attempt to intimidate her as the special session of the state legislature is convened.”

In March 2019, Greene was named interim police chief when former Police Chief Tonya Chapman abruptly resigned. In a letter to city residents a week later, Chapman said she was forced to resign after she was met with resistance from some members of the police department when she tried to change the department's culture.

Chapman said she witnessed in the Portsmouth department "bias and acts of systemic racism, discriminatory practices and abuse of authority." Greene had the interim tag removed from her title and was named chief of police in June 2019.

“The charges against Sen. Lucas and her allies simply do not align with the plain facts of the events leading to the destruction of the monuments,” the Grassroots Law Project said in its petition. “Because Portsmouth PD knows that they do not have a case against Sen. Lucas, they are attempting to circumvent the Commonwealth Attorney for Portsmouth, Stephanie Morales, because of her progressive record.”

In Northern Virginia, state Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy (D), who is running for governor in 2021, said she "wholeheartedly" stands with Lucas. Carroll Foy, who represents parts of Prince William and Stafford counties, said she agreed with Lucas' attorney, state Del. Don Scott (D), who said the felony charges are "a political stunt meant to weaponize the criminal justice system against African Americans."

State Del. Lee Carter (D), who represents Manassas and parts of Prince William County, on Wednesday accused the Portsmouth Police Department of "rounding up its political opposition" by filing the charges on Monday.

The police department also is "trying to kick the Commonwealth's Attorney off the case by naming her as a witness even though she wasn't present for the alleged crime," Carter tweeted.